Baptist-Hindu couple write how-to book on interfaith marriage

Marrying the wrong person — known as being “unequally yoked” — could ruin your faith and your marriage.

But three years after marrying a former Hindu monk, Trent says she’s a better Christian than ever.

“I had become complacent in my Christianity,” said Trent, an ordained Baptist minister. “Now my religion and spirituality have become much more integrated in my life.”

Trent tells the story of her interfaith marriage in a new book , Saffron Cross: The Unlikely Story of How a Christian Minister Married a Hindu Monk. Out this month from Nashville, Tenn.-based Fresh Air Books, Saffron Cross is part of a recent mini-boom of guides to interfaith marriage and family.

There’s also Mixed-Up Love from Jon M. Sweeney and Michal Woll, ’Til Faith Do Us Part from Naomi Schaefer Riley, and Being Both, by Susan Katz Miller.

All are aimed at helping families navigate the joys and challenges of interfaith life. They may find a large audience as blended faith families have become commonplace in American culture.

About out one in four Americans (27 percent) is either married to or lives with a partner of another faith, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, published in 2008 by the Pew Research Center.

But until recently there have been few books on how to make interfaith marriage work.

So Trent decided to write her own, with the help of her husband, Fred Eaker.

It’s part love story, part how-to guide on interfaith communication.

The couple, who are now in their early 30s, met five years ago with the help of eHarmony.

Trent graduated from Duke Divinity School and was working for a North Carolina nonprofit. Her dating prospects were pretty bleak, she said.

“I was, quite honestly, very lonely,” she said. “I was looking for someone that I could share my spirituality with as well as my life.”

Eaker was looking for a spiritual companion, too.

An American-born Hindu convert, he spent five years as a monk at a Gaudiya Vaishnava monastery in California.

The time there taught him self-discipline along with spiritual practice.

“Some people join the military — I joined the monastery,” he said.

When she signed up on eHarmony, the website asked Trent what faiths she’d be open to in a partner. She initially checked Christian and Jewish, and then, on a whim, added other faith traditions.

That ended up including Eaker, who described himself online as spiritual but not religious.

It’s a description he still likes, when talking about faith.

“Spirituality means that you are interested in God’s life and how you can be a part of it,” he said.

When she learned that Eaker had been a monk, Trent assumed he was Catholic. Learning that he was Hindu was a bit of a shock.

Eaker had grown up as a nominal Christian, who rarely went to church, but had at one point taken part in an altar call. But he hadn’t been baptized.

At first, Trent wanted to change that.

“I told him, you are nearly saved,” she said. “As soon as those words came out of my mouth, I realized that I did not see Hinduism as an equally valid path.”

Her view on salvation changed after that conversation, and Trent says she no longer worries about Eaker being saved.

Having an exclusive view of salvation can cause trouble for interfaith couples, said Riley, author of ’Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America.

Riley commissioned a survey of 2,450 Americans on the topic of interfaith marriage as a part of her book. She found those with more inclusive theology tended to be more satisfied.

“If you think that your spouse is going to hell, you are going to be unhappy about that,” said Riley.